Jake-S@cup.portal.com (Jake G Schwartz) (11/06/90)
Nick Reid quotes a previous post: > bi> it is a little silly that we have to > bi> depend on good folk like Gariepy and Grevelle to "reverse engineer" the > bi> system for us, when all the info we need resides in a set of manuals and > bi> some computer files in Corvallis. > bi> It would be *great* if HP would sell a > bi> software developer's package, consisting of the commented ROM code and > bi> whatever development tools they have on hand. But doing so would make it > bi> easy for the clone-makers to undercut > bi> HP's market position, I would guess, > bi> so this seems bloody unlikely. Nick follows with: >It's actually simpler than you suppose. _In_principle_ HP are generally >quite happy to make the information you seek available (most of what they >really need to protect being covered by patent anyway) as they did with the >HP-71, provided that it does not COST them an arm and a leg. However and in >fact, while it is true that all the information you want to see released is >indeed sitting on workstations in HP's Corvallis plant, it is also true that >the cost of extracting it from their development system and packaging it into >a defined and catalog-priced product that will be meaningful and useful to >outside developers is VERY high, and further, once it is an HP product and >thus requiring of "HP support", the "support" costs get to be ASTRONOMICAL. >Basically, what you want just costs so much to produce and support that there >is no way the relatively small market for it would be able to return those >costs. HP's natural commercial response, therefore, is not to produce it. >However, their alternative response, i.e. to make the information available in >other, less costly ways (e.g. via HP staff who can do partial formatting of >the raw data for publication outside of HP's cost structure, or via user >groups, etc, etc) proceeds apace..... I agree, all this unnecessary reverse >engineering is a total pain in the neck, so if you could only think of a way >to increase the number of folk who would pay for HP to release the material >formally, up to, say, around even just a quarter of those who purchase the >actual calculator, I think we'd have the problem licked but good. Well, here's an idea.....It might not take more than a day or so (possibly) for an authorized HP person to take the HP48 source and partition it up into lots of little (32K/64K/?) pieces and make them available for download on Hewlett-Packard's bulletin board system. No printing costs would ensue, and people could download to their hearts' content. Of course this would require HP to consider it okay to "give away" their operating system to the public for consumption. If this could be treated as a "NOMAS" (NOt MAnu- facture Supported) document as the HP41 O.S. document was treated, maybe lots of goodies would come out of it, and we could all send our questions to the gurus amongst ourselves, and leave the Corvallis folks alone. Jake Schwartz